Editors' leader attacks council plan to charge for FoI requests

He was responding to proposals by Hampshire county council to seek permission to charge commercial organisations, such as newspapers or researchers, for answering information requests.

The authority wants the Local Government Association to petition the government to relax the FoI Act in order to request payment from organisations that benefit commercially from receiving the information.

It comes after the council estimated it spent £346,000 responding to 707 FoI requests during 2009-10.

Satchwell said: "Hampshire county council should remember this information doesn't belong to them. It belongs to the public."

Current legislation means answering FoI requests cannot be charged for unless it would cost more than £450-worth of staff time.

Maurice Frankel, chairman of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, said: "We have no real objection to straightforward commercial requests carrying a charge. But newspapers are an important point of scrutiny of local authorities.

"Their work is an important part of transparent government. We'd definitely oppose such a measure."

Hampshire councillor Colin Davidovitz defended the council's proposal. He said: "There's no doubt that newspapers use the information they receive from FoIs to benefit a great deal, by putting it on their front page to sell more papers.

"They are benefiting from research we do on their behalf, at our expense. We also provide information to researchers.

"I see nothing wrong with charging organisations who benefit from the information we give them, for the service we provide. Why should taxpayers pay for newspapers to benefit?"